The present invention relates to a marine engine control system and, more particularly, to a remote control system for engines of small ships.
In a conventional control system of this type, as shown in FIG. 6, an electrically-driven unit 51 and a remote control stand controlled manually 52 are serially connected with an engine E to be controlled through a push-pull control cable (hereinafter referred to as "cable" simply) 53. The electrically-driven unit 51 comprises a motor, reduction gear box, connecting arm (not shown) and the like and is operated by a remote controller 54 so as to push or pull the cable 53. The manual remote control stand 52, provided with an operational lever 55, is adapted, by means of the operational lever 55, to push or pull the cable 53 which is connected to a base portion thereof.
As described above, in the conventional control system, a cable drum of the electrically-driven unit 51 and the operational lever 55 of the remote control stand 52 are connected to each other through the cable 53. Hence, the electric operation and the manual operation directly cooperate with each other. Consequently when a locking mechanism is exerting on the manual remote control stand 52, operating the cable 53 by the electrically-operated unit 51 would cause the motor to be overloaded and, hence, heat-damaged.
Further, since the cable 53 is connected with the engine electrically-driven unit 51 through the manual remote control stand 52, the length of the cable 53 is inevitably long, which causes backlash and frictional resistance to during the operation thereby decreasing the operation efficiency. Consequently there is required to use a motor of a larger size so as to increase the torque of the electrically-driven unit 51, leading to an increase in cost.
The present invention has been attained to overcome such problems. Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a small-sized control system with a very high operation efficiency, good responsiveness and improved safety.